Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Classic or Dud?

this is nice. no bullshit, just straight on srs droney music.

it's always the same with this band. first time you listen to a wagnerian track like mladic (btw that's the serbian general responsible for the massacre of srebrenica) you think it is the greatest thing on earth, afterwards you feel empty and when you listen again it just feels like a big fart. totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch. the word DUD was invented for this kind of music. it destroys itself by repeated listening.

Indeed. Emptiest music I've ever heard. Hilarious, given all of the pseudo-radical political intent of the people involved.

it just feels like a big fart

interesting criticism

it's been 10+ years and they still haven't figured out a way to play non-vegas like places.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

you people are crazy. godspeed is music to live in and by.

Encountering Swans this year has made me shrug at Godspeed.

I like both.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

― sharp-looking tux for rent (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd say this fits Glenn Branca. This band is like a muzak version of Branca--incredibly loud but completely soporific via its facile predictability. It doesn't hold up even once, because you know exactly what it will sound like from the first second--which makes it pretty tiresome, given their proclivity for mistaking lengthiness with significance.

you clowns can keep reaching for ten-dollar critic words for 'bad' but i don't think you're touching on the record at all.

cranking "Mladic" at full volume while driving west towards the Texas sunset was kinda the highlight of my musical year so far. can't really "repeat" that but I'm grateful for it!

You're right, J. "Boring as fuck" is sufficient.

First track makes my top ten list for the year, probably, and is threatening to make me believe in these guys for the first time since Lift Yr.

Efrim's other band never did it for me, the one where the name changed like five billion times

also, NICKY! i didn't know you posted here man, cool

yah welcome to ilx

setlist tonight in bmore-

Hope Drone
Mladic
Monheim
Behemoth ?
New Song ?
One of the segue songs ?
The Sad Mafioso

― spazzmatazz, Thursday, 4 October 2012 05:20 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A couple of gigs I've downloaded from either side of that have the setlist as

1. Hope Drone 2. Mladic 3. Monheim 4. Behemoth 5. The Sad Mafioso

with Behemoth as a new 45 minute long, um, behemoth.

Title probably inspired by LJ's post in 2010:

As I've often said here, GY!BE peaked with their final album - IMO it's several notches ahead of the others, and works that dynamic like a behemoth

― forgive me fada (acoleuthic), Saturday, 10 April 2010 00:11 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know Constellation doesn't have the luxury to decide who they'll sell wholesale to, but this is still hilarious: http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=26873497&parentid=APARTMENT_MUSIC

ha ray i just saw your message, from my birthday no less! only got turned onto ilx like four months ago

* The 1st new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade
* Clear proof of the band's powerful return to form
* Includes new versions of the tracks previously known "Albanian" & "Gamelan"
* As honest & heavy as the rest of their discography
* 180-gram LP pressing in tipped-on gatefold jacket
* Includes 7" vinyl & a 12 x 48" poster, plus a digital download code
* Constellation, 2012

I love the second one. "No, no, seriously - they've returned to form, powerfully!" "Oh yeah? PROVE IT."

The second half of "We Drift Like Worried Fire" is pretty awesome

Man this song came up on shuffle just now and kinda broke my brain again.

Vinyl of 'Allelujah! Don't Bend Ascend from Urban Outfitters: $32.98
Vinyl of 'Allelujah! Don't Bend Ascend from Constellation: $18.00

Dud.

Playing the Barclays Center in October!

http://pitchfork.com/news/51053-nine-inch-nails-announce-massive-tour-with-godspeed-you-black-emperor/

watching them play to an uninterested NIN crowd as it slowly fills up the arena seating sounds horrible tbh.

http://cstrecords.com/statement-from-godspeed-you-black-emperor-on-polaris/

We're already making mincemeat out of them for that over on the Polaris thread.
Polaris Music Prize Shortlist - 2013

Oh. Been pretty inactive on this site of late, so I totally missed it.

speaking of gybe, dude realizes he has a copy of their super rare demo tape, asks reddit what he should do with it, gets trolled, deletes account

lol @ these redditors "pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaasse upload that tape you have no idea how much their music means to me" -- get a life losers

godspeed is great but i'm perfectly content knowing i'm never going to hear that tape.

Was listening to the stream, got to the singing part...

Perhaps this is better left unreleased and buried away.

Is the singing kind of uncomfortable to hear in the silver mt. zion way?

new album coming soon, excerpt of a track herein:

http://rock-a-rolla.com/main/?p=6212

There's a version of this track that's been floating around for a few years called Behemoth that's about four times as long.

That said, I really like this. GYBE! are pretty much the only post-rock band (in the circa 2000 crescendo-core sense) that I listen to any more.

According to the release, the album basically IS "Behemoth."

I'm excited

That excerpt is nice.

Swans have kinda taken over the GYBE token schmindie longform art-rock slot ime. but the last album was nice, if not ~mindblowing~

I guess there's a lot more vocals in Swans than GYBE so that's kind of a weird comparison to make... just saying I wish they had the same freeform/colalge aesthetic they used to rock so successfully in the 'good old days' instead of just riding these long waves of spooky intensity

album stream available on the Guardian site

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/24/godspeed-you-black-emperor-asunder-sweet-and-other-distress-album-stream

really nice

I have never met anyone that dislikes GYBE! Either they love them or they havn't heard of them. Am I the only one that doesn't like them?
― John Smith, Sunday, February 11, 2001 1:00 AM (14 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
"14 years ago" I met a girl who expressed disbelief when I told her I had heard of GYBE, but was not a fan
(I have subsequently been converted. & eagerly await the new album)

man you sure blew it with her

New album's not the best thing they've done, but it's the heaviest certainly. I like it quite a lot, though.

If anyone's interested there are a couple of new tracks played live here:

https://archive.org/details/gybe2015-04-07.aud.flac24

They first new track's *kinda* derivative of Asunder etc but the second one sounds pretty awesome to me, getting more of a Yanqui feel from it.

I'm warming up to Asunder... was initially put off because, in contrast to the 4 distinct 'pieces' on Allelujah!, none of the 4 tracks here is satisfying taken on its own, & the album as a whole seems kinda monochrome & short on ideas compared to any of their previous releases. still, I'll be damned if it doesn't suck me in and hold my attention for 45 minutes, drone interludes and all.

agree with Ultros on the heaviness too -- "Piss Crowns" sits pretty comfortably alongside the fuzzed-out Sabbath-worship of Boris's Feedbacker (another record I'm playing a lot these days)

this album i do not like at all

i don't even want to listen to it again, but i'll force myself to and see if that changes anything

https://www.normanrecords.com/images/godspeed-luciferian-towers/0001.jpg

Luciferian Towers is a heavyweight 180gram audiophile pressing from Optimal (Germany) and comes in a gatefold jacket printed on uncoated paperboard with a printed inner dust sleeve and a 24"x24" pull-out poster that re-caps all four of the artwork panels created by Godspeed You! Black Emperor for the gatefold jacket. Also includes a DL card for 320kbps MP3 album.

This, this long-playing record, a thing we made in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. eyes up and filled with dreadful joy - we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a quiet muttering amplified heavenward. we recorded it all in a burning motorboat.

1. UNDOING A LUCIFERIAN TOWERS - look at that fucking skyline! big lazy money writ in dull marble obelisks! imagine all those buildings much later on, hollowed out and stripped bare of wires and glass, listen- the wind is whistling through all 3,000 of its burning window-holes!

2. BOSSES HANG - labor, alienated from the wealth it creates, so that holy cow, most of us live precariously! kicking at it, but barely hanging on! also - the proud illuminations of our shortened lives! also - more of us than them! also - what we need now is shovels, wells, and barricades!

3. FAM / FAMINE - how they kill us = absentee landlord, burning high-rise. the loud panics of child-policemen and their exploding trigger-hands. with the dull edge of an arbitrary meritocracy. neglect, cancer maps, drone strike, famine. the forest is burning and soon they'll hunt us like wolves.

4. ANTHEM FOR NO STATE - kanada, emptied of its minerals and dirty oil. emptied of its trees and water. a crippled thing, drowning in a puddle, covered in ants. the ocean doesn't give a shit because it knows it's dying too.

Finally and in conclusion; The "luciferian towers" L.P. was informed by the following grand demands:
+ an end to foreign invasions
+ an end to borders
+ the total dismantling of the prison-industrial complex
+ healthcare, housing, food and water acknowledged as an inalienable human right
+ the expert fuckers who broke this world never get to speak again

much love to all the other lost and wondering ones,
xoxoxox god's pee / montréal / 4 juillet, 2017

Tracklisting:

1 Undoing A Luciferian Towera
2 Bosses Hang
3 Fam/Famine
4 Anthem For No State

Release date: 22 September 2017